Ethanol Car Beats Fuel Cells to Win European Eco-marathon
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 05.27.06
From Environmental News Service newswire: -- “NOGARO, France, May 22, 2006 (ENS) - An ethanol powered car engineered by French high school students has achieved the best fuel efficiency at the European Shell Eco-marathon 2006, winning the race at the Nogaro auto racing circuit in southwest France. It also took the Climate Friendly prize for producing the least greenhouse gas emissions in the process”. Energy consumption was equivalent to traveling 2,885 kilometers (1,792 miles) on a single liter of gasoline. This did not best last year’s record, however. TreeHugger recommends reading the full story to take advantage of the photos and especially to read about the Danish engineering team’s invention of a 100% efficient hydrogen propulsion technology.
Entrants’ photo shown is by European Shell Eco-marathon 2006.
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You all need to read your articles more carefully and then apply some common science sense. I assure you that thermodynamics will not allow: "Danish engineering team’s invention of a 100% efficient hydrogen propulsion technology". Reading the article carefully it actually states: "While most hydrogen engines use around 95 percent of their fuel efficiently, the Danish engineers have developed new technology which allows 100 percent of the hydrogen to be used in the fuel cell." Even that must be something of an exaggeration. I understand that to mean they have figured out how to get all of the H2 out of the fuel tank, or perhaps avoid blowing 5% of the H2 out of the fuel cell unconsumed, but certainly not that they achieve 100% efficiency, which is far from possible.
Scott
=== author's response follows ====
Fair enough point Scott. I should have written with greater precision. Only consumption efficiency has been increased over previous designs. I did not mean to say (althought it might be inadvertendly assumed by the syntax) that energy conversion efficiency was 100%, because clearly that is impossible, evn in deep space.
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is in it's infancy so far. We are better off using fuel more efficiently (ie. Diesel technology and used organic oil such as fry oil).
Stoneman
http://www.stonemanautoreview.com